I've done it again! I've managed to finish a book or movie so that I don't need to root around in my mind for something else to talk about. (Even though, admittedly, that's the point of the whole exercise. Last night, my husband and I played ping-pong. There's a ping-pong table in the basement, which is one of the joys of being here. We play three or four games most nights, and he's beaten me every single game since we've been here. Last night, the scores were closer, which means I started to trash talk. Crowing like he better not get comfortable, I'm gaining on him, this was always going to happen. As if I was really showing him by losing by less.
See, deep in my heart I believe that I will prevail. Become master of all. This is reinforced when I win once at whatever it is I'm doing. I say, See! That was the ultimate outcome. I'm reminded of how my dad does this too. When we play cards, he's bewildered if he loses. He looks at the cards like his friends have betrayed them or like someone must have switched them out with a faulty deck. When I'm at nine out of the ten points it takes to win, my dad's belief comes to the forefront. He tells me that it's going to be so embarrassing, coming so close to winning and then having to ultimately lose. He could only have two or three points, but he believes he's going to overtake me to win. That this hardly ever happens doesn't dampen his spirits at all, because if it happens once, and he's been crowing about it the whole time, that's the ultimate.
Okay book time.
**SPOILERS**
French, Tana -- IN THE WOODS
Published: 2007
Read: 2/2021
This author again. So good but so painful. In The Woods is her debut novel and the first book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It's from the point of view of Detective Adam "Rob" Ryan. As a kid, he was in the woods in the small Irish town where he grew up, and his two best friends went missing. They found him in deep shock, the back of his t-shirt slashed, and his shoes filled with one of his friend's blood. He had no memory of what happened that day or where they were. Afterwards, his parents send him to boarding school in England. He eventually becomes a detective on the murder squad and gets along great with his new partner, Cassie Maddox. The two get sent on a case in the same village where Rob grew up. It's a child murder, and it's unclear whether or not it might be connected to Rob's old case. No one except Cassie knows that he's the kid who survived, and Rob wants to stay on this case. As they look for the killer of 12-year-old Katy, Rob tries to remember anything he can from the time his friends disappeared. Katy's father was a teenager at the time and lived in the village. For a while, Rob goes after him. As the mystery unfolds, Rob and Cassie's partnership -- the warm heart of the novel -- falls apart. And the reader starts to get a sense for how fucked up Rob really is. In the end, both Cassie and Rob are essentially off the squad. They've found Katy's killer and the psychopath who put him up to it. The psychopath goes free. And it appears that the new case has nothing to do with the old one, which goes unsolved.
Tana French writes big books! This one was 20 hours long. I got it from the library on 2/9 and finished it last night. It's so traumatizing, being in the heads of French's characters. There's not the same fun lightness of an Agatha Christie novel. French wants to make sure you feel ever single thing. I'm going to keep reading her stuff and hoping that it doesn't make me more jumpy at night than I already am. Luckily, the next book in the series isn't available at the library until about 6 weeks from now. I'll definitely read it when it comes available, but it'll be good for me to give French's work a little break.
Rating: ★★★1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment